Richard Cohen’s Teach for America Column Deserves a Failing Grade

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen‘s Teach for America column today (2/15/11)demonstrates a real problem with logic. “Cut Teach for America Funding and We’ll Be Closer to Flunking the Future,” declares the headline, with Cohen kicking things off this way:

The best teacher in America was in Washington over the weekend. So was the best principal. I cannot name these individuals because they are early in their careers, and the truth of the matter is that I am just playing the odds. They are members of Teach for America, a kind of Peace Corps for the school room–a program so select that most applicants had an easier time being admitted to their college than they did getting into Teach for America. No matter. Its funding is being cut.

Cohen goes on to explain thatthe program’s fundinglikely won’t be cut. But thebigger problem is the assumption that Teach for America teachers are the best–he’s just “playing the odds” here, predicting that the best educators of the future willbe drawn from the ranks of this “Peace Corps for the school room.” His evidence for this could charitably be called “thin.” Teach for America, he writes,

is supposed to produce smart students. It also produces incredible statistics. This year it got 48,000 applicants and accepted 5,300 of them. About 18 percent of the Harvard senior class applied; so did 27 percent of Spelman’s, a traditionally black women’s school.

Note that these statistics don’t say anything at all about whether Teach for America actually produces “smart students.” But that’s all that Cohen comes up with.

What are the real odds that Teach for America teachers will be the best, or even good? I have no idea.Barbara Miner’s profile ofTeach for America in the Spring2010 issue of Rethinking Schools points out thatone of the chief criticisms of the program is that many who go through the two-year program don’t stick around the classroom. But are they better teachers? One study found “no instance where uncertiÂ­fied Teach for America teachers perÂ­formed as well as standard certified teachers of comparable experience levels teaching in similar settings.” Yes, the program attracts a lot of applicants. But it alsoseems designed to promote career paths outside the classroom:

TFA, meanwhile, actively promotes the value of joining its teaching corps, especially for those thinking of graduÂ­ate school or immediately transitionÂ­ing to a corporate job. Its website boasts of TFA’s partnership with over 150 graduate schools offering TFA alumni benefits such as two-year deÂ­ferrals, fellowships, course credits and waived application fees. The most popular schools for TFA alumni are Harvard, Stanford, Yale, NorthwestÂ­ern and the University of California-Berkeley–with Harvard the overall top choice. Its employer partners, which acÂ­tively recruit TFA alumni, are equalÂ­ly prestigious and include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, KPMG, Credit Suisse, McKinsey & Company and Google.

Cohen’s column is yet more example of corporate media’s fondndess for Teach for America. “If the maniacal budget cutters have their way, the best teacher in America will become another investment banker,” he writes. But Cohen provides no evidence that Teach for America produces such teachers–and apparently doesn’t think he needs to.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

As a student who will be doing Teach For America next year, its sort of disappointing to hear such criticism. Everyone participating is excited to help and make a difference, and this is stomping on those dreams. Even if some students don’t continue to be a teacher, their experience and advocacy for public education carry on and make a statement.

I think those stomping on dreams – yours, other participants, and the students, as well – are the creators of such programs, which, like the “Peace Corps”, manipulate the idealism of young folks to serve the antithesis of their stated aims.

But I’d like to propose that you, if you reply to this, please include a link to a page at which you’ll keep us apprised of your progress, and your views of TFA as time goes on. I’d certainly be interested in an insider’s perspective.

Reading some of the comments leads me to think that we are not (all) reading the same comment.
I thiink it is worth noting that there is a yet recognizable needed distinction between enthusiasm and idealism on the one hand, and over estimating ones powers to influence the outcome of events while underestimating and undervaluing how kids cope with their experiences.

There is an add hitting the the airwaves here in NYC. In it the declaration is made that in order to keep “great teachers” we need to set aside, if not do away with, seniority (and tenure). The implication here is that among newly hired there are some “great teachers” The add was put together, obviously, I think, but those we know nothing about teaching, or those who fear losing their teaching positions, or both.

If teaching is an art, as many claim it is, then a degree of calmness would seem to lead to the question
series: Are great painters made in a few years? Are great composers made in a few years? Are great
writers made in a few years? Are great philosophers made in a few years? Are great leaders made in a few years? ‘Greatness’, if it is to apply to teaching, and I am not sure it does, takes experience, failure as well as success, work, persistence, a knowledge of ones limits in the lives of others, and not least. . . wisdom. It does not come quick, if it comes at all.

Senioirty is not a claim that senior teachers are all wise, or good, or great, only that no one is to work for twenty five years and then be dismissed because two first-year teachers might be hired for the price of one–not an uncommon practice in teaching in years gone by. (For its part) Tenure does not mean a job-for-life. I means that after a certain period a teacher cannot be dismissed without cause! It means that if a board or supervisor wants to dismiss a tenured teacher, that board must show that it has a valid case, and it must show its case to a disinterested third party, namely and arbitrator. It means that the teacher has the right to confront the evidence and argue a defense. Tenure means ‘due process’ . . . something we would want for ourselves should the time come.

Listening to the likes of Mike Bloomberg and those who serve at his pleasure, listening to The New York Post, taking them seriously, is a good way to do onto others as you would not want them to do unto you and those about whom you care.

Just want to point out that TfA is a top down solution. Imported folks from a privileged world working in communities of scarcity probably does lead to an awful lot of learning — for the elites. Whether TfA’s smug self-aggrandizing, limited mandate to focus solely on pushing academic performance really enhances the scholastic community on which it is imposed is another thing entirely. I’m not sure kudos and funds are warranted for two year stints in padding resumes and putting off “real” career decisions. TfA recruits have a tremendous amount of options anyway.

I thought I was the only one who saw TfA as a way for my fellow privileged Harvard alums to pad their resumes so they could then go to Goldman Sachs with a clean conscience. No doubt, working at Goldman is not only more remunerative, but also much easier than being a real teacher in a low-income district. People who do 2 years and then leave for their real career aren’t around long enough to learn how to help, let alone actually be helpful.

Excellent, very important notice by FAIR and really hard-hitting comments, especially by Shelly Ottenbrite. Oh, what a sucker’s game TFA is – kind of like the Peace Corps, kind of like all the noblesse oblige frauds that give elite academia such an unwarranted patina of do-gooder righteousness.
I know of one not-so-young man, a first-rate educator already, applying to this Ivy League neoliberal bastion – and it is such a waste of his good intentions, and such an indictment of Harvard and its ilk, that this stupidity of “change through classroom” boosterism persists. The Barbara Miner article in Rethinking Schools should have won a Pulitzer.
Amir – just throw away that BA – you seem so put out by the slightest “criticism” – is that what four years of indoctrination have “taught” you, to not allow a single word of hard reality to disturb your youthful fantasies?

Thanks for that link, Doug–a really good article. I think you’re onto something, Sam. It seems we should be focusing on the people who train to be teachers–the young (and not so young, like myself) who actually set out to get into the profession, and fully intend on staying in for the long haul.

[…] They will now have a much harder time finding a job. Further, there is sufficient evidence with Teach for America that most of these ÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€¦“drive throughÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€šÂ teachers generally leave the profession after a couple of […]

TFA should be gutted. Why is the tax payer picking up a big portion of their tab especially when it is a program that is designed to be a resume booster for rich kids (or at least well off kids) from privileged backgrounds acting like martyrs for a couple of years while working at TFA before landing that lucrative position at Goldman Sachs.

These kids are not do-gooders. They use TFA as a resume booster for grad school (usually MBA), resume for grad school, or the cut throat competitive management consultancy industry/investment banking industries where their true career ambitions lie. The poor inner city kids are not well served by the high drop out rate of wet behind their ears 22 year old rich kids who neither have the empathy to relate to a kid who may not have their breakfast nor the desire to implement change, but are using their TFA experience to vault onto higher paying jobs.

The TFA program is simply designed to benefit the rich kids from Ivy schools, not the inner city kids that are subject to the ostensibly altruistic but truly self absorbed teachers with zero experience and no incentive to do anything permanent since they are only there for a couple of years.

If the rich kids want to boost their resume let them do it on their own dime!

The generalizations here are running rampant. I am a TFA corps member and I have spent my first four months of teaching constantly analyzing the pros and cons of the program, and I must say it has made me a better teacher. But perhaps that is because I don’t fit the mold that some of you seem to think makes a typical corps member. I am not rich or privileged and I do not plan on leaving my kids once some assumed “resume builder” is secured. TFA is a group of individuals. Please, keep that in mind.